Beach City Blues
by Abel Quartz
Summary: This is a series of shorts based off of characters/prompts and "soft angst starters" from Tumblr, which you can find linked in my profile. The link to the prompts is here: /softangst
1. I wish you were here

"What?"

"I said, I wish you were here!"

The music sounded distorted over the phone, even more so through the makeshift speakers. It was even harder to hear over the sound of a couple dozen other students. Steven adjusted himself against the backboard, holding his phone at arm's length.

Connie gestured behind her at a shaky pong table. "They won't let me play anymore," she said. "My aim's too good!"

Several of the guys behind her shouted various statements agreeing with her. Steven laughed and nodded sagely. His neck felt stiff from having to sit here so patiently as Connie talked about all her classes, about the wonderful campus, about how she was really enjoying her first party and how she was scared but how he had taught her to be brave back when they were kids.

A man's hand came out of frame and took Connie by the wrist. She turned to the offscreen friend and laughed.

"Hey, I gotta go, but call me - next weekend, okay?"

"Alright, enjoy yourself. Bye!"

Steven smiled at the camera. Connie's face came in close, and she blew a kiss at the lens. There was a still frame, then the call ended, and faded to the messenger screen.

He shut his phone's screen off and put it next to him on the mattress. Lion looked up from the ground and snorted. Steven turned to the window and tried to pretend.

"I love you," he said, without intonation, to nobody in particular.


	2. Am I making you uncomfortable?

Rose didn't answer. Greg cleared his throat. "I know, it's not really the best situation, but we need to work through this before…"

The Gem wiped her eyes and nodded. They had come further down the beach to get away from the boardwalk, hoping perhaps it would be easier to talk about this. Greg found that he was starting to choke up as well. No amount of internal composure could prepare him for this.

"It's the truth," Rose said. She stared out at the ocean. "They need to know the truth, whenever it happens."

She felt the bulge of her stomach. Greg rested a hand below hers, and his stomach jumped as he felt the movement underneath. Steven or Nora, or whoever they were, was squirming. However long they had left, it wasn't much time. The closer the deadline drew, the less prepared Greg felt.

But they had agreed on this. Greg pushed himself into a crouching position on the rock, watching his lover as she sighed into the wind.

"I don't want our child to be… I don't want them to wonder if I'm alive. Can you imagine? Having that question, not knowing if your parent is alive or dead. I don't want them to wait for me."

"They won't," Greg said. "I promise, I'll tell them. As soon as they ask, I'll tell them. And - "

"And tell them that I love them."

Greg couldn't help but smile. "That's just what I was gonna say."

"I love them so much…"

Rose covered her face with one hand as she broke silently. Greg put one hand as far as he could reach around her, the other on her belly. It was decided, and it was the right thing to do. They held each other until the sun began to dip on the horizon, warming the summer sky.


	3. Stop pretending life doesn't terrify you

" _I'm_ not the one pretending."

Connie stopped for a second and put her hands on her knees, catching her breath after the sprint. Six years, and she was still having to chase Steven to these places. The lighthouse was still broken from the last invasion, but stood tall, illuminated by the light of the moon above the town.

"I - am not the one who still thinks that running is going to fix any of this," she continued. She rose back to her full height. "And I know you know better. We've been through it all together! I know you haven't forgotten that."

Steven just sat on the lighthouse steps with his hands in fists. Connie wanted to be angry with him, so angry, but when he looked up, she saw the caged animal, pacing behind the bars. He wanted to be angry, too; neither of them could truly feel it.

"I'm not running to fix this," he croaked. He cleared his throat.

"Steven - "

"I just need space."

"Steven."

"I'm sorry, but - but were we ever together?"

Connie stiffened like he had struck her in the face. Steven stood up, nearly a foot taller than her now, and still going. She knew him, she knew that he didn't mean anything spiteful or that he was leaving. Regardless of the explanation, her tongue felt numb in her mouth as she waited. He gestured vaguely up at the stars.

"This world is… _fucking_ absurd," Steven said. "You've seen stuff no other human on earth can imagine, and then the war, and the things on Homeworld… And you're not scared by any of it. And I don't know how you can - be here? how you can - "

"I CAN'T, Steven. WE can."

The interruption pushed Steven back, and he inhaled slowly, raising his face upwards. Connie's finger pointed at his gemstone, an accusation.

"The reason I can 'pretend' is because of you," she said. Her voice was too steady, like a tightrope walker over the alligator pit. "I don't pretend, I believe in you, because of… Do you even know what I would be, who I would be without you? Because I don't! And I don't care! That's what scares me, Steven: not the world where we lose together, but the one where we win alone."

Steven crossed his arms over his chest. The wind caught his shirt and blew the red cotton around his waist as the moonlight caught his face. Connie noticed, he had lost weight.

She crossed her arms as well from the night chill. "That's why we did all of that when we got back, Steven. That's why we got you into sessions, that's why my mom got you the meds, and - Steven, she doesn't do that, not for no reason, and even she knew you needed…"

He had turned away again. Connie let her arms fall down to her sides.

"When was the last time you talked to Dr. Siegel, Steven?" she murmured.

His arms started to tremble. She had seen those arms lift boulders, cars, break down doors like they were made out of tissue paper.

"When was the last time you took them, Steven."

He just sat down. Right there, on the grass, Steven sat down with his hands in his lap. His head fell forwards, right into his hands.

Connie couldn't see him anymore. She blindly knelt down in the grass behind him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. One ear pressed against the back of his spine. Steven's breath shuddered beneath her. Connie closed her eyes and tried to ignore the breeze around them. He was so warm.


	4. Is it my fault?

"It's nobody's fault but _hers_."

Out in the desert the sky was so much clearer. There were no light barriers from the cities and the coast, none of the streetlamps clogging up the clouds in hazy grays, nothing from the horizon to dull the bite of the mountains as they cut into the tail of the Milky Way. Out in the desert Pearl could take Connie and they could be away from the panic of the other Gems.

"Where is he, Pearl?"

Fortunately the stars had literally aligned. As they sat on the warp pad, Pearl pointed upwards, towards a certain cluster in the sky.

"Right about thirty degrees," she said, "towards the west from us."

"I… I should have done something more. I should have fought, like I fought Blue Diamond back at the wedding, like… I should have fought like he meant something to me."

One week ago, they had been expelled from Homeworld, and they had been stranded on Earth without space components. Even if they had the ability to become airborne they had been warned, warned that no attempt should be made to take Pink Diamond - to take Steven - away again. And in an instant, in a forcefully nauseating wave of space-time distortion, they were careening towards Earth again.

Amethyst had been frozen for the first time in a while. Garnet had immediately questioned how they could get back and get a ship working again, and while Pearl had done her best to placate her, there was no viable option, nothing left for them to do right now.

Pearl remembered the panic escalating, and then the sight of Connie on the floor of the spaceship oblivious to the lights and sounds around her. The girl's lips moved, and Pearl read them with the clarity of someone who had said the same words in the same way with the same broken realization.

 _I can't do this again._

The desert was completely still, dropping rapidly into icy temperatures despite the warmth of the previous day. Connie wrapped her jacket around herself and wiped her face on her sleeve.

"You did nothing wrong," Pearl reassured. "We were overwhelmed, all of us. I was fighting Homeworld for decades, but things have changed, and even I know that you would have been hurt. They would have killed you without a second thought."

Connie nodded and shivered. "He's alone up there."

"He's made it before. And White Diamond doesn't want to hurt him."

 _Probably._

"I - I don't care, I just want to be there for him, just once, I want to be able to keep my promise that I'll be there. Why do we always get - Why do they have to take him from - "

Her voice had been wavering, and it shattered like crystal as the girl leaned against Pearl and let all her tears go. The Gem held Connie in her arms, weighing her against the numbness of her own panic. Maybe it hadn't set in yet. Maybe she truly believed in Steven up there. But Connie needed something else right now, something not even the Gems could give her. She needed Steven back.

"It's not your fault."

Connie let out all her stresses and all her aching breaths, sobbing softly as the endless hours of panic ebbed out. It wasn't going to fade, not until she could see him again. Pearl looked up to that wretched star and wondered where Steven was, what he was thinking about, what plans were stewing to bring himself back to his planet.

She already could picture Steven on the cushions, laded with opulence and tended to at all hours, with the curtain drawn as he cried into his sheets. She could picture his question, and her heart broke as she heard the boy across galaxies:

 _"Is it my fault?"_


	5. Don't touch me

Steven pulled his hand back immediately.

"Connie, please, I didn't mean to - I didn't mean to make you feel like that, I swear, I just got…"

There was no excuse. Back in the gymnasium, the music pulsed gently, as much of a pop-music slow dance as the middle school would allow. The parking lot was chilly this late at night, and Steven crossed his arms. He couldn't imagine how cold Connie was in that dress. In her anger, though, that was probably the last thing she was thinking about.

This was a new anger. When she turned around, Steven found himself trapped in her glare. He had never seen Connie this upset before, ever; she was too mad to cry. The boy froze up as Connie raised her hands, trying to find the words to match her mood.

"How could you _ever_ think that was a good idea?" she blurted. "Everyone saw! Everyone was looking at us, and you just _kiss_ me right in the middle of the gym? What were you thinking?"

"I…wasn't thinking, Connie, I didn't know…" He wanted to feel angry back, to accuse her of anything at all, but she was right. "I didn't mean it."

"You. Didn't. _Mean_ it?!"

"NO! Nononono, not like that! I mean I didn't - I was - "

Ten thousand excuses clogged his brain at the same time. Steven grabbed his hair and two-stepped in place, pacing without pacing as he tried to think of the right thing to say here. This was spiraling out of his control faster than he could imagine, and he could tell that Connie needed him to say something that he couldn't find.

"I know what you were trying, and that's not the problem."

Oh no. She was calmer. Steven stared and forced himself to swallow. His breath was racing, and he inhaled enough to slow that down, sucking the night air through burning cheeks. Connie had her back turned, staring at the empty parking lot.

"But Steven…"

Her voice broke. Steven's hands lowered to his sides.

"You don't have to see these people every day. I'm going to go back on Monday and everyone's going to look at me and think, that's Connie, the girl who got her first kiss, and I _never_ wanted to be that girl. People used to think of me the way I wanted them to think about me, and that's _gone_ now."

"Connie…"

"I used to be that smart girl, that quiet girl, and now that's gone. People _prey_ on that, Steven. They feed on it. You don't know what that's like."

He didn't. The one academic experience he had hadn't ended supremely well, and the treatment wasn't the greatest. For a young woman, for his best friend, he couldn't imagine, and his stomach sunk as he watched her head lower, her shoulders shaking as she contained her crying.

He didn't think. When he leaned in, when the music faded out not five minutes ago, Steven was lost in his own teenage dream. The warmth of her lips had been blown away by the night breeze. The hand that had been on her waist had been jerked away. It was only now that he remembered the number of eyes that had been on the girl as she stormed out of the gym doors, the flighty giggles from around the dance floor, the murmurs that followed him as he had called her name out loud -

Steven rubbed at the slight stain on his khakis where he had dropped an hors d'oeuvre earlier. His birthday shirt did little to protect him from the night, but he knew that he couldn't do anything to convince Connie to come back into the warmth of the gym. He had messed up. No, that was wrong - he had hurt her.

Lion loped out from behind the corner of the building, patiently waiting for the children since their arrival. He walked up to Connie, turning in front of her to brush against her body. When he looked at Steven, he didn't glare with his usual derision. He was built for comfort. She needed it.

"I'm sorry. Connie, I'm so, so sorry."

The music faded over to the regular dance-pop, still muted by the solid walls of the school. Connie warmed herself against Lion and steadied her breath against the night. Steven stuck his hands in his pockets and waited. He couldn't fix this for her. He could never bring a first kiss back. The two teenagers stood in the parking lot as a singular street lamp watched their night pass by.


	6. Are you still alive?

"I sure hope so," Connie grunted, trying to push herself upright.

The hospital was so quiet this early that she almost didn't recognize it. As she raised her palms to rub at her eyes, Connie felt the rubber IV drip moving around in her wrist. Steven jumped up and adjusted the stand, gently moving the tubes so they wouldn't get torn out.

She looked around the empty room, then at Steven. If he had any injuries himself, they had already healed up. His eyes, though, betrayed the exhaustion that he tried to hide with his smile.

"Your mom and dad are in the on-call room, and one of the other doctors let my dad stay there too," Steven continued. "The Gems are helping to do some heavy cleanup in the town. Things got really bad there for a bit."

"Steven…how long was I out?"

The boy's face faltered, and he bit his lip as he turned towards the foot of the bed. His voice was almost a whisper.

"Almost two days. On and off."

Connie's stomach twitched. The static had just begun to fade enough for her to feel panicked about her predicament. The battle had been won, of course, but she had been unconscious, genuinely knocked out, for the first time in her life, and all the reactions in her brain made her surge upright. Immediately, her body reacted with a burning pain through her ribcage. As she fell back against the pillow with her teeth clenched, the soreness resonated to all her limbs to highlight the extent of her injury.

Steven sprang upright with a gasp, hands outstretched over her. "Oh gosh, oh no - Connie, I'll get a doctor, I can have them bring you some more - "

"Hrrrng. No, no, Steven, I'm fine."

Both of them knew she was lying. Still, after a few seconds of catching her breath Connie was able to open her eyes and figure out where exactly she was injured. The bandaged wrapped around her ribcage were the first to be found. When she stretched her leg, Connie could feel the cast encasing her left leg as well. Steven continued to stare as Connie then brought her right hand to her head and traced the long line of sticky stitches trailing from the back of her neck to top of her ear. Her fingertips gently brushed the shaved chunk of skin, gentle bristles in a patch on her skull.

"Wow."

"The Gems got you here right away," Steven said. "I tried to tell the doctors that I could heal you but they wouldn't let me because they had to, um, stabilize you."

"What did you say? 'Here, let me spit on your patient?'"

That got a laugh. Connie chuckled quietly with Steven as he gripped the frame of her bed. She looked down and realized that she was closer to the floor, lowered much more than her bed should have been. She also realized that Steven probably had access to the height controls. Her smile faded as she saw the finger-thick dents in the metal where Steven had held on to the bed before.

He was exhausted. Connie sighed and reached with an outstretched left hand, pulling the IV bag gently. When Steven took it, she could feel the familiar softness of his palms, constantly warm even in the dead of winter.

"You don't have to stay here," she murmured. "You need to sleep eventually, or you'll just end up hurting yourself."

"I-I know, I just wanted to be here when you woke up."

"I'm awake. I'm okay. Don't worry about…"

It was always a losing prospect when Steven tried not to cry. Connie held on as her best friend wiped his face, rubbing tears across the dark bags beneath his eyes. She knew that she didn't even have to ask what was wrong. He would tell her, because he knew she wanted to know.

"I couldn't save you," he whispered after a minute.

Connie didn't know what to say. She opened her mouth, but Steven's stifled sob made her pause.

"I promised I'd be there and we'd be together and when you needed me I couldn't save you. I'm sorry, Connie, I'm sorry…"

Steven took Connie's hand and held it up to his face, teeth gritted together as he shook with shame. No, not just shame - Connie saw that he was afraid. All the power in the world, all the strength in his body, and the person he cared about the most had almost died. After what had happened after Aquamarine and Homeworld, they had made a kind of vow, and Connie was pressed under the weight of his guilt. What would it take to save her?

She didn't need saving right now. She was safe, she was here, he was here. Connie curled her finger around Steven's hand and pulled. He looked down at her blindly, out of breath.

"Come here."

"W-what?"

"C'mon."

She pulled his hand towards her chest, nodding her head to her left. Steven's confusion softened, then he held a button underneath the bedframe. The lift whirred softly as it sunk towards the floor. When it was low enough, Steven climbed on, then pressed the button again to whir them back up to their normal height.

He moved himself so gingerly around Connie as she pushed herself over, making a space for the boy on her cot. Steven accepted her motions and followed as much as he could, until finally he was lying on his side, still sniffling a bit as Connie held him with his head tucked by her neck. Cautiously, he stretched his hand over the girl's body, letting the weight rest without squeezing so as not to further hurt her broken ribs.

Steven stiffened as Connie began to run her right hand through his hair. As he relaxed, she relaxed with him, staring at the ceiling lit only by the desklamp Steven had turned on as soon as she had begun stirring.

He wasn't ready yet. She wasn't, either, but Steven especially would always be bound by his empathy. Connie couldn't blame him for wanting to save her; that part would always be in his nature. But you can't save everyone. Loss was inevitable, and unfair, and terrifying, as terrifying as the reunion was joyous. They didn't have to talk about this now. Connie needed to recover, and Steven needed to rest.

As Connie looked down to ask if this was okay, she heard the gentle grunt of a snore. She didn't care if her parents came in and saw this. The warmth of Steven's body helped her eyes to close in turn, and she drifted off with her warrior by her side. They had won, and they were together again, exhausted into dreamlessness.


	7. You're not safe here

"What do you mean, not safe?" Connie whispered, stifling her laughter as she climbed through the window.

"What if the Gems catch you?"

"They won't, Steven."

The Gem boy tugged in the rest of the rope that Connie had used to rappel up the side of the house. The rocks at his window had surprised him at first, but it was no worse than having pizza thrown up there. Onion would have lent her a grappling hook if she had asked, probably.

Connie took off her bike helmet and shook out her hair, putting it on the boy's comforter. "I just came to check in on you," she said. "You sounded really down over the phone."

Steven sat back on his bed, rubbing his eyes. It wasn't like he had been sleeping well anyway. He covered his mouth as he yawned.

"I was just really looking forward to our arcade trip," he said, "and I feel bad about all of this. It's my fault. I got… I said some stuff, to the Gems."

"What…kind of stuff?"

The voices were raised, the fingers were clenched, and the tempers had flared up enough for Steven to be grounded for a more sensible amount of time - one week, at Greg's discretion. What had he been so nervous about, anyway? Steven rubbed his head and wondered why he was remembering himself as nervous. If he had seen himself, he might have called his behavior angry, bratty even, but not nervous.

"I don't wanna talk about it," he mumbled.

Connie sat on the bed next to her best friend, gently running her fingers through her hair as she watched him stew. Steven kicked his legs back and forth as each second of silence made him regret this interaction.

"Steven, I'm - I know it sucks to be grounded, but it'll be over before you know it, and then we'll go out then! We could even bring the Gems if you want, you know, make it kind of a family thing?"

It was supposed to be a friend thing. Steven rested his face in his hands and let out a small sigh. That response snapped too quickly into his head. It was too mean, too direct. Of course it was supposed to be a friend thing, but what did it matter?

"Hey, I understand if you wanna just rest tonight. I'm sorry for - for biking here, and throwing rocks at your window, a-and I know it's silly, I just - "

"What? No! No, I do want to rest, but I don't want you to feel bad about this!"

Was there something in her tone to tip him off? Was it the edge of a word, a particular consonant that made him defend her presence? Connie looked surprised, and Steven wasn't sure what he had said.

"I don't feel bad?" Connie said. "I mean, I'm a little nervous because we're sneaking around. But I don't feel bad."

"Oh, I - Oh."

Both of the kids giggled as quietly as they could, trapping the sound of their conversation in the open bedroom. Steven reached to rub the back of his head, one foot bouncing gently. He cleared his throat.

"Connie, it's good to see you. And I…I appreciate you being here. I feel better now about this whole thing. It is only a week, right?"

"Six and a half days, one hundred and fifty hours. But who's counting, right?"

In the mental image of their time together, Steven had been so excited to spend a day just with Connie. He loved going out places with the Gems and with his dad and with the friends of Beach City, but with just Connie, things were simpler, with only one person to watch out for, one person to talk to and to feel and to respond. Somehow, when that one person was Connie, a new feeling emerged in Steven's head. Whatever it was, he realized now that it had been there when he had yelled at the Gems earlier, and it was here now.

"…right?"

"Yes! Yeah, no, I'll - I'm counting down too. Just don't stay awake like me, though."

"It's a promise, Steven Universe."

Moments later, the rope was flung out the window, with Steven as its anchor. Connie deftly scaled her way out the window, feet planted on the side of the house. Steven gripped the cord from inside, and when he felt the two tugs, he leaned out the window to smile at Connie below, tossing the rope back to her. The friendship heist had been a success.

"Night!"

"G'night, Connie!"

Both whispers were just enough to carry them to their rightful recipients. Steven watched Connie's bike disappear into the night. She cared, even risking the safety against the Gem's possible interruption or even her parents' wrath. Steven closed the window and checked his clock.

 _One hundred and forty-nine,_ he thought.


End file.
